Tag: Life

To anybody that isn’t a teenager perhaps reading this in this particular day and age, I don’t expect you to understand anything I write in this post. For it’s a popular opinion that being a teenager is essentially the ‘best years of your life’ whereas I completely disagree.

The first thing to look at when discussing the truth of being a teenager is the ultimate fact that you have no idea where your life is going. This could be deemed exciting by many because of all the possibilities we have right in front of us. However, from my personal experience, it’s absolutely terrifying. I would say that I am quite a spontaneous person and love nothing more than to go on an adventure just for the sake of experiencing new things. However, not knowing whether I could be in my dream job or no job at all because of decisions I make as a teenager just mortifies me. It’s a constant push towards university or apprenticeships or just anything that doesn’t involve a risk because simply anything ‘exciting’ in this day is also so competitive you might as well not even try.

This then leads me onto a similar sucky thing about what teenagers are subjected to at a far too young age..options. Somehow it has become acceptable to ask children to pick options that they want to follow as an adult. These options will determine what you can study in college or university and pretty much decide a job for you too. Trying to push a child that wants to grow up to be a princess or an astronaut whether they’d like to study maths or media as an adult is just insane. The world has become so insane with advancing technology and making it less shitty that we aren’t allowed a childhood or an adolescence anymore.

The next truth to being a teenager is the pure confusion towards whether you matter or not. We’re constantly told we’re very important in the development of the world and ‘WE ARE THE FUTURE’. However, in absolutely any situation that has any importance, we’re ‘just kids’ and are not mature enough to make the right decision. Hence older generations that aren’t going to be living with the changes deciding our future. My question is, if I am able to decide my entire future at 16, why can’t I vote?

The next biggy in the room about being a teenager is the image we are expected to have. Teens are expected to look like magazine models and reality TV stars when battling puberty, school stress and part time jobs? How is that even possible? Why is it ok for 14 year old girls to feel depressed because they haven’t developed boobs or a bum like somebody from the cast of Towie. Or how is it OK that a teenage boy going through the inevitable skinny stage, feels like if he doesn’t have a six pack and a cool car by 17 then hes never gonna get a girlfriend. 13 year old girls and boys are not mature or realistic enough to understand that the images they see are purely fake and edited so why are we showing them it?

Finally, the one that got me the most…battling relationships. From being tiny children watching Disney movies to being teenagers obsessed with TV, its always been addressed to us that we should only do certain things with ‘those who mean a lot to us’. The biggest lie is possibly the ‘lose your virginity to somebody you love’ crap. In an ideal world, losing your virginity to somebody that you were going to grow old with would be amazing. However, at 16 or 17, what are the chances that person is going to stay in your life? In fact, people of my age now are actually giving up on even relationships with the people they sleep with because they’re sick of being hurt but still want to fight the urges that are being pushed on them by hormones. Our parents or teachers or whoever we tell our feelings to may just laugh that heartbreak off and say its a part of growing up. But, why is this told to us so late in life? We were told to romanticise everything but never told that it wont always work out. Nobody mentioned that being betrayed at an age such as 17 or 18 may actually shape the way you look at yourself for the rest of your life.

My goal of writing this was to kind of rant but to also just get the message across that its not as ‘easy’ as people may think. Yes we may not have any or very little bills to pay and we wont get taxed or have to pay insurance. But whenever you tell your teenager they should appreciate what they’ve got and shut up, just remember that they’re probably crying themselves to sleep over battling school, jobs, bullys and boys. I don’t know about many other teenagers but i personally cant wait to be an adult.